Re: Again The ETH Is A Scam

From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2010 08:49:16 -0500
Archived: Fri, 29 Oct 2010 10:08:07 -0400
Subject: Re: Again The ETH Is A Scam
>From: Jeff Ritzmann <jeff.ritzmann.nul>>To: post.nul>Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2010 11:45:31 -0400>Subject: Re: Again The ETH Is A Scam>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>>>To: <post.nul>>>Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2010 08:52:34 -0500>>Subject: Re: Again The ETH Is A Scam>>>From: Greg Boone <Evolbaby.nul>>>>To: post.nul>>>Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:19:39 EDT>>>Subject: Re: Again The ETH Is A Scam
<snip>
>>>Nowadays if you don't support the ETH and it's offspring you get>>>lambasted but I remember when supporting the ETH and any related>>>matters would get you tossed into a psychiatric hospital, fired,>>>beaten up and ostracized.>>Opposition to the ETH has been pretty much arguably, the>>mainstream position in ufology since the heyday of Jacques>>Vallee and John Keel. So has the rhetorical trope that one has>>made oneself a martyr by opposing the ETH.>>But in your case, Greg, you don't even seem to grasp what the>>ETH is or what it's based upon. Perhaps it's a subject you ought>>just to let be.>Greg is precisely correct about the reaction to ETH opposition ->and Jerry, with all due respect sir, if you think otherwise>you're completely out of touch. I don't think we're speaking in>terms exclusive of researchers, but in terms of public view and>reaction. (right Greg?) But, some researchers too, can be and>are just as closed to the notion that we're not talking about>spacemen. Try bringing up non-nuts and bolts issues to these>folks and watch what you get.
Oh, boy.
As I wrote in a follow-up message (unposted as I write these
words), the ETH is widely mistaken for the consensus view of
ufologists because non-ufologists who deal with it on cable TV
and in popular culture always make that equation. For one
thing, they know no better, and for another, the real
complexities of the phenomenon are hard to portray for the
casually interested.
That's the good pro-ufologist news: it's not their fault. As for
the bad, a great many ufologists pay no attention to
developments in planetary science and exobiology which, if they
were sympathetic to the ETH, they would find exciting and
revelatory. Thus, they have no clue how the ETH and modern
astronomy are less in conflict than they ever were.
For reasons that sometimes make little sense, many people within
the UFO subculture remain as hostile to the ETH as they were
when Vallee and Keel first appeared on the scene seeking
occultish counter-narratives. ETH-phobes can be extraordinarily
close-minded, even emotional, about it, and - as I know from a
lot of personal experience - loudly displeased with those who
deem the ETH an entirely reasonable approach even when those
persons stress that the ETH is not certainty but hypothesis.
If there is one thing I am not, by the way, it is "completely
out of touch." The fact that your argument depends on that
dubious charge does not do it
credit.
>This nasty reaction of alternate ideas isn't new, but might be>based on who is "center stage" as far as popular view - and>right now the exopolitics bunch is getting the most mainstream>attention. And, again, I can tell you from personal experience,>that crowd doesn't like the notion that this may not be>extraterrestrials.
Oh, really? The Exopolitics crowd has nothing to do with the
ETH, which is not a hypothesis for it any more than contactee
conjecture about ETs is a mere hypothesis. Let me stress again.
Everybody who discusses ET is not talking about an ET
Hypothesis. Contactees and exopoliticians consider the presence
of ETs a fact, not a scientifically based speculation.
Jerry Clark
Listen to 'Strange Days... Indeed' - The PodCast
At:
http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/sdi/program/
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